


i offer only the highest level of discourse

by tritonvert



Category: French Revolution RPF, Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Battle Pillows, Bini, Marat will always be a badass, bossuet has a cool grandmother, bossuet has no sense of smell, fiction prompts, mostly hijinks, odds and ends, sometimes AU, sometimes canon-era, that one time bossuet killed enjolras by mistake
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-10
Updated: 2014-04-15
Packaged: 2018-01-04 06:52:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 32
Words: 11,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1077900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tritonvert/pseuds/tritonvert
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stuff from fic prompts and other odds and ends on tumblr.  Come on, all the cool kids are doing it.  Mostly Les Misérables and some French Revolution tucked in as well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Not a convincing tricoteuse

"Ah—Bossuet, old thing. You know I don’t like to pry—unforgivably rude to pry—but—um."

"Um? Um. Not a bad speech there, Jolllly, a fine flight of phrasing. Next time Enjolras tells you to take the pulse of the medical school—"

"—don’t remind me—"

"—you must be sure to start your oration with a resonant ‘Um.’ Or an ‘ubb’ if you’re a bit stuffed up."

"Bossuet, I think you’re being evasive."

"Well?"

"What are you doing?”

"These are needles; this is yarn. One might say I am applying the one to the other; one might even say that I am knitting. A knitter, now, I don’t claim such expertise, I am no true knitter, the women of the revolution would find me out in a moment as an impostor if I sat among them—”

"—not enough hair, for one thing—"

"—but I do knit."

Silence, or near-silence, while Joly blew his nose and started a kettle boiling on their little stove. He’d been on his way to make a warming tisane before he’d noticed his friend’s…hobby? 

"You’re fidgeting, Joly."

"It’s just—well, I mean—"

"My grandmother. That is how and why. And what, is a warm woolen comforter in scarlet.”

"Your grandmother."

"She felt it was a useful thing to know. ‘You might run away to sea,’ she said, ‘with a broken heart, and find yourself hunting whales off the coast of Greenland, or perhaps toiling around the Cape, and your ship might strike one of those great ice mountains and you might be stranded or have to row off in a little uncovered boat with nothing more than what you had on you, and if you didn’t have a sweetheart at home knitting you warm socks and jerseys—and why would you run away to sea in the first place if you had a good girl like that at home—you would be shivering to death in your plain shirt, and you wouldn’t want to be the first one to die like that and be eaten by starving shipmates. Or you might be in a war, sent off to Russia, and the only thing between yourself and death would be a horse and your wits and a horse only lasts so long, so you had better know how to do something useful for yourself and prepare for all eventualities.’ And so she sat me down and made sure I was prepared. For eventualities. It was before I went off to boarding school—I was six or seven, you know? But I haven’t quite lost the knack, it comes back to you." 

"Your grandmother—"

"My grandmother was a saint."

"Right."

Another silence, in which no one at all froze to death.

"It is for you, by the way.”

"Well, thank you."

"It was going to be a surprise."

"It still is."


	2. The emotive fabric shop situation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bahorel and his unnatural bedding; the emotive fabric shop. Apologies to Dickens.

"Was that shop always there?"

The sign on the shop certainly looked like it had always been there.  It was well-weathered.  But one would have noticed it before, no?  A sign in English reading **NOTIONS** , with a line below, rather smaller: (CURIOUS).  The shop itself might more understandably have gone unremarked.  The windows were very dirty, and what one could see through them looked like it might be dirty as well.  Bolts of cloth, dressforms, old hats, a dangling string of…buttons?  Call them buttons, because nothing had scales or bones quite like that.

"Was that shop always there?"

Grantaire opened his mouth to fill the silence after Jean Prouvaire’s question, then shook his head, baffled.  “There must have been something there.  The physical space cannot have been empty.  _Horror vacui_ is a phrase I have heard.  Sometimes in artistic circles and once from our Bossuet, who took the liberty of drumming on my head as he spoke.  I think a man with so little on the outside of his head should hold his peace instead of making personal remarks about the inside of other heads. —I said so to Joly, _hold his peace_ , in English, and that libertine affected to misunderstand—”

By this point, Bahorel had shouldered past him into the shop, and Prouvaire was slipping by as well.  Grantaire followed.  There might be a pretty shopgirl.

"I can’t get up, whoever you are, because my back is bad and my legs are queer—Oh," continued the small woman behind the counter, switching to French, "this is Paris, isn’t it.  How can I help you three…gentlemen."  Grantaire began to draw himself up to protest that little pause before the last word, a vacuum he abhorred, but decided it was not worth the trouble.  Prouvaire was already smiling tenderly at the woman, struck either by her wealth of golden hair or her bent back.  Bahorel had moved right over to a bolt of scarlet-and-turquoise silk.

_You’ve got to be kidding me_ , thought Grantaire, and crept out while his friends were busy.

—-

  
"Say what you like about there being a little dust here and there.  _I_ think I’m in love.”

"With the shop or with the girl?"  Bahorel held his purchases up to the light of his window, rather a grubby thing in itself. 

"The shop, of course.  Miss Wren is clearly a child of another plane altogether, and it would be absurd to speak of her as you and Grantaire speak of this grisette or that."

"I’m pretty sure she’s English."  Yes, he’d been right.  This cloth _was_ perfect.  Blue dragons and peonies on scarlet.  He’d never seen it before, either, which was all to the good.  None of those stupid scenes where you showed up and someone else had the same waistcoat.  “Jehan, don’t sit on that pillow, it’s—not safe.”

"It’s a pillow.  How can it not be safe?"

"It’s—my sister just sent it up from the country."

"That must answer some question, but not mine…."

"Just don’t sit on it.  Listen, are you sure about that velvet you picked out?  It looks a bit…peaked.  Languishing."

"You just mean it’s not searing your eyes.  I think it suits me perfectly.  It practically called my name."

——

——

Combeferre carefully unfolded his spectacles and slid them into place.  Seeing more clearly didn’t help.  The hour was still midnight; Jean Prouvaire was still in his shirtsleeves; Bahorel was still carrying a bundle of red-and-blue cloth that suggested a rather banal English attempt at chinoiserie.  “So…is anyone injured?” 

"My pride.  Prouvaire doesn’t trust me to bandage a minor scrape."

"Joly and Lesgle would have fixed the scrape and the pride, between them.  Or are they, um…"

"Grantaire said they were engaged for dinner with a friend."

"Um."  And apparently Grantaire was involved in this story too.  Naturally.  Combeferre sat Prouvaire down by the hastily-lit lamp and examined the "minor scrape."  It was minor, certainly, but was scrape the word?  He brought the light closer, frowned again, and reached for his forceps.  Was that…flannel?

"He’ll live, right?"  Bahorel loomed suddenly over their shoulders, having moved close with a surprisingly soft step.  "It’s just a—"

"—A scrape, yes.  So I gather.  Caused by what, exactly?"

“ _Caused by Bahorel’s unnatural bedding!_ "  Prouvaire had been so quiet until now that his outburst made Combeferre blink.

"I’ve told him a hundred times not to sit on that pillow."

"You told me _once!_   Because ‘your sister had just sent it up from the country.’”

"And anyone with an ounce more sense than sensibility would recognize that it _wasn’t a safe pillow._ ”

Combeferre decided he would just do what he always did, and tidy up the injuries without asking.  Maybe by dawn his guests would have explained about the wriggling bundle of silk clamped under Bahorel’s arm.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clue prompt: Enjolras, in the parlor, with a gun. 
> 
> Guest appearance by Stephen Maturin.

"Why, these are a fine pair.  English?  Yes, they must be.  Combeferre, where did they…Combeferre?"  Enjolras had wandered into the parlor, where he had left Combeferre reading in the morning; he himself had been out for a ride, reacquainting himself with his home countryside.  "Did they come with the post?  Is there news?"

Combeferre put down the letter in his hands and nodded once.  His glasses were off: Enjolras could see that he had been crying.  “What is it?”

"Nothing—that is, nothing to do with any of our friends, don’t worry.  The pistols were left to me by my professor."

"Doctor…"  Oh, of all the times to forget a man’s name.  Enjolras bit his lip.  "The English physician, that great traveler, who retired last year?"  It had been after July.  After that failure.  Combeferre nodded again.

"Irish, not English.  But yes.  There is another package as well, a trunk of books.  His daughter thought it best to hold them there in Paris until we returned after the holidays.  —He was a great dueler in his day, he told me."

Enjolras picked up one of the pistols again and studied it more closely.  It really was beautiful work.  He inspected the other: also beautiful.  His hands itched to take them out, to try them in the woods.  Were they as true as they looked?  A deadly pair.  “I’m sorry, Combeferre.  I know you admired him.  And he thought well of you, too.”

"Oh, I don’t know.  We disagreed.  He didn’t think well of me the last time we spoke, just before the fighting."

"He disagreed with your politics?" 

"No…yes?  He was a Republican, through and through, but he never had a good word for anything I proposed to do in that line and he swore he would fail me in that class— Oh, hell, I don’t _know_.”  It was rare for Combeferre to use anything like bad language.  Enjolras touched his shoulder.  “We’ve missed the funeral already.  It was today.  I know I ought to write to his daughter…Enjolras, perhaps you should have these.  They would suit you better than me.”

Enjolras put the pistols carefully back into their box.  “They are yours, Combeferre.”


	4. Monsieur et Madame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For Bossuet Appreciation Week: and it ties in with my Miserable Holidays Exchange fic, I promise.

"Hallo, Joly, where did those little bird-things go? Your aunt’s finches? We’ve lost a few sets of wings."

"I brought them to Musichetta.  I knew she would be merciful to them."

Lesgle considered this as he plunked himself down in front of the fire and started removing his boots.  “Did you—mmh—did you mention Combeferre’s verdict?” 

"About their unnatural lifestyle?  Ye-es.  Yes."

"Combeferre didn’t say unnatural.  —Hell, these things are devilish tight.  Why did you talk me into buying new boots, Joly?"

"You said you wanted to.  I merely suggested the style. —No, Combeferre didn’t say unnatural.  He just started prosing away about the variations one sees in nature and whether it would be worth the experiment to introduce a female into their cage, or better two females, and proposed to keep them himself and study their habits closely."

"I think ‘unnatural’ was Courfeyrac’s opinion.  Of Combeferre’s enthusiasm.  An unnatural fascination—Christ, I think these are made of sticking-plaster—an unnatural fascination with the domestic habits of Joly’s aunt’s finches.  May she rest in peace."

"May she indeed, a fine old lady.  If a bit innocent about the ways of birds.  _Monsieur et Madame_ ….  Bossuet, stop complaining and let me help with the damned boots.”

They grunted and struggled until a liberation was achieved.  Panting, Lesgle flopped back in the chair; Joly sprawled on the rug before the fire. 

"So…you gave them to this Musichetta of yours."

"I did.  She said she didn’t mind a few irregularities.  Anyway, they’re beautifully domestic, they keep an elegant nest and preen one another in a most devoted way.  If they didn’t make me sneeze I would keep them here myself.  Let the gentleman-finch be a guide to all men who would be happy!"

"Mmm.  Listen, Joly…"

"Mmm?"

"When are you going to let me meet this girl?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Zebra finches (like plenty of other birds) will happily form long-term same-sex pairs. It was going to be gay budgies first because I love budgies goddammit but then I looked it up and budgies weren't really being bred in Europe yet. I mean, I dunno, maybe people had some budgies anyway--they had parrots and "parakeets" of some kind--but finches were a little more historically accurate. I wouldn't want you to have historically-inaccurate gay finches, you know? Also there is the boots joke.)


	5. your sleeves are problematic

"Is not her name Musichetta?"

"She is a superb girl, very literary, with tiny feet, little hands, no I mean really they’re tiny, especially compared with her sleeves, her sleeves are basically this wide, you wouldn’t believe it.  Sometimes she has the puffy round sleeves and sometimes she has those ones with complicated shelf arrangements sticking out in two or three layers that are dropped way down to really emphasize the droopy slope of her shoulders.  You basically can’t guess how her arms might be put together at all, I mean, there’s like hardly any suggestion of actual human anatomy. And she is white and dimpled, with the eyes of a fortune-teller. I am wild over her."

"In your place, I would let her alone."

"Not until I find her elbows.  I swear, I’m still just guessing where they might be."

 


	6. Digne fille de cinq louis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Word prompt: "Henriette and Bossuet, malapert? Or Combeferre and Bahorel, concilliabule, if you like that better?"

"At which point Danton himself rose up and thundered, ‘ _We are all in the conspiracy against carp!_ '  And the moment was seized.” 

One of the young women—Henriette?—whisked her bonnet off the table and out of the way of Bahorel’s gestures.  One of the other girls—Sophie, that was the name—shot her an apologetic look, which by some alchemy turned into giggles and then outright laughter.  “…all right, all right, not the Corinthe,” Sophie gasped when she caught her breath again.  “But it’s nothing to do with Danton and his conspiracy against carp, _or_ to do with you and your finicky opinions about fine cuisine. —Henriette, did I tell you about the time he gave me a recipe?  Really and truly, a recipe.  _From his sainted mother._   Because only Mother Bahorel, in the whole of France, knows how to cook a carp.  The original Hucheloup was the closest second to her in skill, and upon his death this fellow here—” she kicked Bahorel under the table, visibly, and ended up somehow with her foot cradled on his knee, between his large hands, “—this fellow here wept like a baby until I told him I would cook him carp every Friday if it would make him smile again.”

"I think we have strayed from our point."  Combeferre carefully didn’t look at the way Bahorel had begun to play with his lady-friend’s bootlaces.  He was also not looking at Henriette, who had the air of someone working on a pun.  (This was an expression familiar to Combeferre.)  In fact, he wasn’t sure where he _could_ safely look.  Bahorel had roped him into this conspiracy—had then surprised him with the arrival of Sophie, and Sophie’s friend Henriette, and Sophie’s friend Henriette’s friend Musichetta—whom Combeferre had always understood to be Joly’s mistress, but who spoke with confident authority on the subject of Lesgle’s birthday.  So he found himself in company with rather more young women of a rather freer disposition than was usual for him on a Tuesday afternoon. 

Combeferre’s desperate gaze returned to Bahorel.  “Wouldn’t Courfeyrac or Grantaire be of more use?  Grantaire would know the best place for something of this sort…”

"Grantaire would give the game away instantly.  And Courfeyrac’s footing the bill.  But he can’t attend our little conspiracy.  He _said_ he was likely to be in bed all week…nursing a cold.  And then Joly took off like a rabbit.”  Musichetta hid a smile.  “So it’s down to us.  Don’t worry, Joly will be there when the time comes.  But you, your role is crucial.  Our L’aigle de Meaux will trust _you_.”  Bahorel had left the bootlaces alone long enough to sling a heavy arm over Combeferre’s shoulder.  “So—name the place for the first act of this extravaganza.  But not the Corinthe.  Or the Musain.  Or—where else did we rule out?  That place with the dubious cheeses?  Well, never mind.  Where would _you_ take Bossuet for a quiet and entirely unsuspicious little supper if you were proposing such a thing?”

"I…I already said I’d try the Corinthe…or whatever little place was nearest by…"  Combeferre fought the impulse to hide his face in his hands.  He was a courageous and cool-headed conspirator, but not one of Nature’s arrangers of surprise parties.

—

By Wednesday night (Thursday morning, really, since someone had heard a bell chime midnight not long ago) everybody had lost track of where this dinner—this festivity—this orgy—was taking place.  Or who was there.  Lesgle, for instance, was fairly sure he’d seen Combeferre at the beginning of the evening, and that Combeferre had lured him and Joly with promises of a quick bachelors’ supper, some chops while they caught up on medical journals.  But where was Combeferre now?  A mystery!  And where was Joly!  Possibly under the table!  Where was Musichetta?  Possibly with Joly! Where was Bahorel?

…no, really, where was Bahorel?  Bahorel had been the one placing orders and generally intimating that he had a full purse set aside for this _event_.  “We’ll eat up a hundred francs, easily,” he had laughed.  And now neither he nor his friend Sophie were to be seen.  Lesgle turned to Sophie’s friend, whose name… whose name… damn, what was her name?  It was something clever.  Or it had set off a string of clever ideas…something about Bahorel’s hundred francs, five louis… 

"Henriette!"

She seemed to smile at him and he smiled back with every atom of good cheer in his body.  “Henriette!  Digne fille de cinq louis…tire-moi…um…tire-moi…”

"…your boots, maybe?" 

Someone very kind, presumably Henriette, was patting his hand.  When he opened his eyes again, someone very kind, possibly still Henriette, was indeed taking off his boots, and putting them on the floor next to the couch—a very kind couch, which had most mysteriously appeared.

Perhaps if he found Combeferre, Combeferre would understand.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Writing prompt: Bossuet and Joly, Accidental Baby Acquisition

The table next to them began to wail.  It was a sudden, piercing sound, starting off thin and quickly gathering strength.  Joly hiccupped.  Lesgle felt suddenly sober.  “I think someone has left a baby,” he said in measured syllables.  “I think someone has left a baby, possibly under the table or behind that, that article of furniture there.  —Would you call it a canapé, Joly?  The green thing with its back to us.”

"I believe it’s Chippendale."

"Oh?"

"They’re English." 

"Ah."  Lesgle had the feeling Joly had not quite grasped the situation: but the dear fellow was always game for an adventure, and had gotten to his feet.  He wavered to the article of furniture and peered carefully over the high back.  Lesgle caught up to him and provided a firm hand under his elbow before he could list too far to the side. 

"It’s definitely a baby," said Joly.  "We’ve seen pictures of them in lectures.  It’s, ah—hmm—it’s a baby, all right.  I will go so far as to deduce…diagnose…say that its lungs are in fine shape."

"No one is doing anything about it."

"Well, it’s a public ball.  Everyone’s otherwise engaged."

"I think it wants to be held.  You’d better, you’re…you’ve seen pictures of them in lectures."

"My dear Bossuet, I am in no condition for delicate operations."  No.  Well.  That was true.  Lesgle did his best, and it turned out that babies were quite muscular. The creature arched its back in a hostile manner and turned very red. 

Half an hour later, Lesgle and the baby had come to a better understanding: the baby was huffing sullenly around a milk-sopped crust of bread provided by a frowning servant.  It had very dark eyes and not much hair.  He could sympathize.

An hour later, and still no one had claimed it.  Joly finished his third cup of coffee and rubbed his nose with his cane.  “Well, my dear, I suppose we might take it home and put a notice in the papers.”

"How do you propose…"

"In a fiacre, of course."


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trope prompts: French revolution (anyone)--Groundhog Day
> 
> and Danton--Secretly A Virgin

The clock chimes gently: six o’clock.  A bird begins to trill: tweep-tweep tweep-tweep, _tweep-tweep tweep-tweep._ In the street outside a man entreats his sweetheart to put her little hand in his.

13 July, 1793.  Hôtel de Providence. 

Charlotte Corday rolls over in bed, then sits up.  For the fifteenth time in a row.

\------  
\------

"I don’t see," said the ghost of Robespierre, peevishly, "I don’t see why so many historians have wasted so much time and ink on whether or not I died a virgin. Why me? If anything, they should be looking at Danton."

"WHAT?" The ghost of Camille Desmoulins, currently haunting a bottle of a nice Spanish red, nothing fancy but well worth some attention, sputtered and surfaced.

"Everyone knows—"

"No, really, _what?_ ”

"I suppose it’s a stretch to say that everyone knows. But he did confide in me once that he had never—that is—”

"He and Gabrielle _had babies._ Several! Like clockwork!”

"I happen to know that they had an arrangement. Really, Camille," —the ghost settled his spectacles back on his nose— "Sometimes I think you’re _impossibly_ naive.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clue prompt: Courfeyrac, in the back room of the Musain, with his silly hat.

The back room of the Musain fell silent.  One last domino clicked to the table; Grantaire swallowed a mouthful of words.  Joly caught a sneeze before it could escape.

"Evening, evening!  Nice to see you here, Feuilly, glad you could make it.  Bossuet, your sleeve is in the candle-flame, you should put it out.  —Oh, are you looking at my new hat?  Nice, isn’t it?  Birthday present from Combeferre.  Made it himself."

Bossuet thumping his arm on the table was the only sound.  Courfeyrac continued.  “He worked out the pattern from the eggs of shorebirds, those little snipey things that make their nests in the rocks?  If you put it down on the paving-stones or you lean up against a wall, you can barely see it.  And then you see the hatband?  It hides six lockpicks.  And a place for a few coins, _and_ a tiny oilskin sack with a pencil and some paper.  Also, ahem, a few items a gentleman might want—Bahorel, I’ll show you’ll later, you might like the [illustrations](http://sallypointer.com/animal-gut-condoms).”

He took it off, dipped an elegant bow.  “But that’s not the best.  Look.  You undo this little flap in the lining—so—you pull out this silk sack—and thus!  A hot-air balloon.  To carry messages.  Combeferre said he was still working on the fuel problem but I’m sure he’ll have it by Christmas.”

All eyes turned from Courfeyrac to Enjolras.  It was time for their leader to speak, to voice the thought in all their minds.  He rubbed his chin.

"… _Why?”_


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clue prompt: Prouvaire, in the conservatory, with a rope

Something moved.  Something moved, something rustled, something _lived_ in the darkness.  Jehan held his breath, listened, breathed again.  He too _lived_ in this darkness.  The forests of the night…  It was blood-hot here.  _When the stars threw down their spears, and water’d heaven with their tears_ , he whispered, _Did he smile his work to see?  Did he who made the Lamb—_

"Prouvaire!  Hey!  Jehan!  I see it.  Now look, I’ve got the rope ready, all you need to do is flush it from hiding." 

Jehan elbowed Bahorel until he moved off his toes.  “Where?”

"Behind those…tree things."

"Avocados."

"No, avocados aren’t trees.  Are they?  I think it’s a sort of cactus—can’t you see it?  The moonlight is on it."

He narrowed his eyes, nodded.  The light fell on a dim faintly-striped form.  In daylight it would be blue and white; now it was a creature of silver and steel.  It rippled. 

(Instinct, Bahorel had told him, was powerful in some of these battle pillows.  “They go broody,” was how he had put it, “like a Crèvecoeur hen,” but Jehan considered the simile unworthy.  What stirred in the pillows was something more primal than the impulse that made chickens cluck and fuss.  See, as proof, how the creature had sought out this strange terrain.  It rejected the ordinary.  “Fuck, it’s probably gotten into one of those hot-houses at the Jardin des Plantes.  It happened last year, too,” was Bahorel’s explanation.  “Last year it picked the biggest goddamn cactus to nest under and I was picking spikes out of my hands for weeks.  I’m sending this one back to the farm, I swear to God.  If I don’t skin it for pillow-cases first.”)

Bahorel swatted Prouvaire’s backside.  “Get a move on, will you?  The night guard makes his tour every two hours.  Just, you know…creep up behind it and then wave your hands.  Hoot.  Make a bit of fuss.”

Sometimes it was hard to be a poet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The only thing remotely silly here of course is the presence of the Mexican hot-house at the Jardin des Plantes, when, as we all know, construction didn't begin until 1834.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clue prompt: Bahorel, at the Corinthe, with a plate of stinky cheese

"Whew!  Call for a gravedigger and tell us quick, who died?"

"Blondeau, say it’s Blondeau!"

"Joly, here’s a subject for your dissections."

Joly craned to see past Lesgle and Grantaire, holding a handkerchief to his face.   “Who, Bahorel?  He looks much too alive to me.  I don’t go near ‘em till they’re stiff.”

"That’s what Musichetta told me last night!"

“ _Ha ha_ , Grantaire… No, but what is it?”

"Gentlemen, I present to you a fine citizen of Liège, one M. Limburger."

"Did it walk here by itself?"

"A friend brought it.  A friend, incidentally, with news I want to share with _our_ friend Enjolras—but that’s for another time.”

"All right, but why did you inflict it on the Corinthe?"

"Ah, well, Sophie wouldn’t have it in my room."

They fell silent again, just for a moment.  Grantaire coughed.  “That’s what she told me—”

“ _No._ ”

Another, longer pause.  Bahorel looked at his friends—three pairs of earnest eyes, three noses red from cold rather than conviviality, and relented.  “Also, because it’s the time of year you’ve all run out of allowances.  I knew I’d find someone lurking about here, hoping to extend his tab as far as a hot meal.  I’ll call for whatever else they’ve got that’s fit to eat, it’s on me.  Come, Joly!  Here’s a knife, here’s your patient, show us your cutting wit!”


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clue prompt: Bossuet, in the library, with a candlestick

"Oh God, I’ve killed him."

"You haven’t."

"Oh God.  Find—find Joly, find Combeferre—no, not Combeferre—"

"Bossuet.  You haven’t killed him.  I’m sure."

"You’re not a doctor."

"He’s _still breathing_.”

"…You’re right, he is."

"And now he’s sitting up."

Someone began to snicker.  “He could be a revenant.  An, an undead horror.  Enjolras, have you risen to claim our souls?  Do you thirst for my blood?”

"I’d like a glass of water."  He was feeling the back of his head gingerly.  Speaking of blood—yes, there was a spreading stickiness in his hair.  He closed his eyes.  "Courfeyrac.  Why did you—"

"No, I’m sorry, Enjolras, it was me."

"Bossuet.  Why did you—"

"We thought the police might come.  And we heard someone at the door… There’s no water but I have a flask.  Shall I find Joly and—ugh, here, my cravat will serve as a bandage, a few _honorable_ stains will improve it—”

Enjolras considered the brandy-flask.  As far as he could tell it was already empty.  The bandage, however, he would permit.  “Bossuet.  _Lègle._   Can you and Courfeyrac explain to me, very carefully, why you thought the police might be coming to this library?  Do they generally raid students at the medical school?  At this time of day?  One officer at a time?  And were you doing anything the police would object to…in the library?  I thought we were all meant to be studying for once.”

The story that came out seemed entirely unconvincing to Enjolras, and as his friends explained hey clearly lost faith in themselves as well.  It struck him, as Bossuet laughed nervously, that they must all be very tired.  (Also that they had been applying themselves to the brandy, but that was neither here nor there.)  Two groups they worked with had been raided in the last week: Bahorel had been detained overnight, and Feuilly had only escaped arrest through a remarkable rooftop adventure.  This was, in fact, why Enjolras had ordered his friends to stick to their books for some little time.

He interrupted Courfeyrac gently with a hand on his arm.  “Listen, will you show me your weapon, Bossuet? —Ah, a candlestick.  I am…greatly pleased by your courage, friends.  Your courage and your resourcefulness.  May I make a suggestion to you both?  Go home.  Eat a meal.  Take some exercise, a long walk in this brisk autumn weather will do you good.  _Stop hitting people with silverware._ ”


	13. Please update Wookieepedia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clue prompt: Camille Desmoulins, in Mos Eisley, with a potted apple tree.

"Marat, you pick the most unpleasant places to meet.  I understand you value your secrecy, but…what is this?  I’d never heard of the Cantina Chalmun.  I had to ask directions from ten different men before I got here.  What neighborhood is this?  It’s vile."

"Mos Eisley.  You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.  We must be cautious."

"I’ve never heard of Mos Eisley.  Are we even in Paris still?"

"…Tatooine, actually.  Listen, Camille, can we get down to business?  Here, let’s get a table behind that tree, it should give us some privacy.  The musicians will give us cover as well."

Camille sat, hunching his shoulders away from the musty-smelling potted plant.  Its fruit appeared to have rotted on the branch.  Trust Marat to find the most dramatic corner of an impossible place.  “So, what is it.  You want me to publish something for you?”

"I propose a series of articles, a joint work…"  He sketched out his suggestion, something to speak more directly to the social change the People’s Friend envisioned.  Camille found it hard to concentrate.  The fleshy bald men behind him, playing their odd pipes, kept drawing his attention away.  What were they talking about, again?  Printing twice weekly?  Distributed by—

A new commotion interrupted Marat.  Oh, wonderful.  Someone had just been shot two tables away.  A corpse on the floor.  Camille stumbled out of his seat and fell against the potted tree that had hidden the two journalists; it unfurled a branch and rustled fiercely.

"S’pplt k|sss l’plq," said the tree.  "Klt xq’rrr!"


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clue prompt: Marat, in the Convention, with a pocket full of posies

 

Any student of the French Revolution has seen this image.  The French Revolution: the mind and heart at once surge and falter at the mere phrase.  A time of great men and great monsters.  A time when the mob filled the streets, spurred by the suffering of centuries, no longer silent; a time when mobs filled the unmarked graves, silent witness to the power of that mob.  A time of madness: Marat, transposed from the sewer to the Convention, brandishes a pistol there amongst the thinkers, the purists, the men of noble ideas and noble delusions.  25 September, 1792.  Marat, human-inhuman, malign dwarf become giant for a moment that would be unthinkable in any other time and place.  He addresses the Convention: the Gironde leaps for his throat, the Montagne disavows its unclean unwanted associate, the Plain quakes like any uneasy mud-puddle.

Less do we hear of the moments before.  The moment when Marat, shuffling among his papers, rummaging in his stained pockets and reaching within the coat still redolent with mephitic subterranean fumes, was heard to mutter, “Oh, for fuck’s sake, I had it here somewhere.  The hell is this—flowers?  Oh, Jesus Christ, Simonne was going to take those to her sister’s baby shower.  If she has my gun, I’ll—oh, no, never mind, here it is.  Ahem.  _If you had passed an arrest decree against me, this gun would have removed me from the rage of my persecutors—I would have blown my brains out at this very podium!_ ”


	15. Ayurnamat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Word prompt: Bossuet, Grantaire, Ayurnamat

"I really am sorry, Bossuet."

"Think nothing of it."

"If I’d known Joly’s mother was visiting…"

"How could you?"

"I can’t think how she took it into her head that I was her son’s friend Lesgle.  Called Bossuet."

"Why, it’s a flattering comparison for me!  I should be the one apologizing!"

"…and if I’d known she was Joly’s mother, and not a superannuated seamstress, I would never have suggested…"

"Of course.  A minor note, Grantaire, not to be taken as anything but a thought, perhaps those kinds of suggestions shouldn’t be made before developing a considerable friendship?"

"I’m sure you’re right." 

A quiet spell.

"At any rate, think no more of it.  Joly and I have an arrangement for these misunderstandings."

"…Why, do they often occur?"

"He shall inform his mother that this uncouth acquaintance of his, this friend who appeared at his door altered by drink and made unspeakable insinuations that would shock any woman, let alone a respectable mother of—"

"All right, enough, I _heard you._ ”

"—mother of three, was that wretched young man from England, Bunbury.  One can believe anything of an Englishman."

Another long pause.

"But really, I _am_ sorry about the stuffed ostrich.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ayurnamat - The philosophy that there is no point in worrying about events that cannot be changed. 
> 
> Sorry, Oscar Wilde.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: what if an improvised guillotine became a Clue murder weapon?

"Okay, you know what?  You know what, Bahorel?  I give up.  I quit.  We have been playing this game for an hour and a half and no one has got the solution and—"  A large hand descended on the Cellar and pinned the precious envelope to the board, just as Courfeyrac reached for it.  Courfeyrac glared.  "Seriously, man?"

"No cheating."

"I’m not cheating, I’m calling _bullshit_ on this whole game, there is something seriously _not okay_ here.”  Combeferre grunted agreement from behind his laptop and Bahorel rolled his eyes.

"Combeferre, you’re not even playing the game, your argument is invalid."

"I was _listening_ to the game.  All possible instruments and all possible locations—and I think all possible suspects—have been eliminated.”

Meanwhile, Courfeyrac had been scrabbling at Bahorel’s hand, prying up one finger at a time but making no headway.  “Don’t make me thumb-wrestle you for this, Bahorel.  I’m a thumb-wrestling _demon_.  These thumbs strike terror into the hearts of—the hearts of… why is Jehan laughing?  Hang on, Jean Prouvaire, _you’re_ the one who distributed the cards, what—”

Prouvaire, red-faced from suppressed emotion and flailing on the floor, waved a hand at Bahorel, who grudgingly released the crucial envelope.  Courfeyrac took it by one corner and shook out the cards inside.  They were very plainly written on scrap paper.  “The back room of a café…?  Quasimodo, in the back room of a café, _with an improvised guillotine?_   Jehan, _you suck._ ”


	17. The Very Busy Marius

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry, Eric Carle.

Early one morning, the winds of fate blew a Marius into a carriage outside a café.  He huddled in the back and began to muse.

"Monsieur Marius Pontmercy!" said the Laigle de Meaux, "Want to hear some law-school jokes?"  The Marius didn’t answer.  He was very busy with his reverie.

"Monsieur," said the Courfeyrac, "Want to live with me and meet my friends?"  The Marius didn’t answer.  He was very busy with his reverie.  ("Coachman," said the Courfeyrac, "take us to the hôtel de la Porte-Saint-Jacques."  The Marius didn’t notice when they went to a café to meet Courfeyrac’s friends.  He was very busy with his reverie.)

"Down with the bourgeois tragedy!" said the Bahorel.  "Want to tear up the streets and upend the social order?"  The Marius didn’t answer.  He was very busy with his reverie.

"Vive l’avenir!" said the Jean Prouvaire.  "Do you want to talk about the gods?" The Marius didn’t answer.  He was very busy with his reverie.

"Vivent les peuples," said the Feuilly.  "Do you want to talk about history and nations?" The Marius didn’t answer.  He was very busy with his reverie.

"I’m thirsty," said the Grantaire.  "Life is a hideous invention of I-don’t-know-who.  It’s worthless.  Do you want me to admire the people?  Which people?  Should I admire France?  England?  In Charing Cross alone a hundred people die every year from hunger.  America?  Slavery!  I have the spleen, complicated with melancholy, plus nostalgia, with hypochondria, and Enjolras will never notice me."  The Marius didn’t answer.  He was very busy with his reverie.

"Achoo!" said the Joly.  "Want to help me work things out with my girlfriend?"  "Hullo again," said the Bossuet, "Want to help me work things out with Joly’s girlfriend?  We are more or less all in love."  The Marius didn’t answer.  He was very busy with his reverie.

"Waterloo!" said the Courfeyrac.  "Want to talk about Napoleon?"  The Marius had been interrupted in his reverie.

"To conquer the world twice," said the Marius, "by conquest and by splendor, that is sublime!  What could be greater?"

"To be free," said the Combeferre.  "If Caesar gave me glory and war I would tell him to take back his scepter and chariot, for I love my mother more."

"My mother?" said the Marius.  He was very busy with another reverie.

"Citizen," said the Enjolras, "my mother is the Republic."

The Marius didn’t answer.  He had been left profoundly shaken, and with a melancholy shadow on his soul.


	18. It is a very good leg

"Well, _Bossuet_ doesn’t mind it.  Does he.” 

Bossuet, prodded, poked his nose over the top of his book and shrugged.  “I do not.  As long as you drape something tidily over it.  There are generally at least four legs in this room and very often six or more, so why should I object to an extra?  Besides—I pay no rent for my lodging.”

"But I still mind."   One inconvenience of a three-person ménage was that you could be outvoted.  And the young men had a tendency towards solidarity when it came to questions of housekeeping.  Musichetta opened another window, pointedly, and ignored Joly’s protests about the unhealthy airs.  "The air is vastly more unhealthy _in here_ , with _that._ ”

The leg sat quietly on the table.  _On_ the table, for all love!  On the _table!_ They _ate_ on that table!  Sometimes other things happened!  “Joly, Lesgle, I am leaving.  You may find me in my rooms, with Sophie.  And possibly Bahorel.  Make of that what you will.  Alternatively, you may find another location for your specimens and studies.”

When she left, Joly pushed his curls out of his eyes and slumped.  “Well, damn.  Do you think she’ll change her mind?”  Bossuet, with his nose back in his book, shook his head.  The end of the term was upon them.  “I suppose I _could_ rent another room to study in.  My parents would…would understand the expense.  Especially if I describe the corpses.  I don’t know where.  Not one of those student hotels, someone would steal my leg the first hour it was there.  —Do you think Combeferre would let me leave it with him?  If I said he could keep the phalanges?” 

"Jolllly, llllight of my llllife, I may not care personally about an extra leg or liver here and there—mostly here—but Musichetta has every right to choose where she eats her meals and where she sleeps and I refuse to suppress those rights.  Try Combeferre first, then ask about renting a portion of Sophie’s mother’s cellar.  That will put the leg back in Musichetta’s court."

Joly poked sadly at the fichu-draped length on the table.  “It’s a very good leg.  I don’t want it to go off while I’m negotiating.  —Are you sure you don’t mind?  Really?”

"I mind the interruption to my studies.  I have every intention of finishing this term, just for the novelty.  —No, really, I don’t mind it.  I’ve told you, I have no sense of smell."


	19. It is a very good leg, pt. 2

Combeferre only wanted the foot.  “I’m sorry, Joly, I really am, but I don’t need another leg.  I don’t have room for another leg.  I told you you could have shared with me when I got one last week.”

"I had a dinner engagement."

Enjolras frowned at his pen—which failed to sharpen itself out of sheer force of will—and picked up a blade.   Combeferre plucked it gingerly away from him and handed him a proper penknife.  “Not the scalpel, Enjolras.  Please.”

"What’s the trouble?  Sorry, I wasn’t attending."  He waved a hand at his mess of papers, drafts mingled with other drafts.  His cravat was soaking up spilled ink and the blunted remains of three nibs scattered across the table explained his falling back on quills.  As Combeferre explained Joly’s request, a furrow appeared in Enjolras’ brow.  "Who is Musichetta?"

"Joly’s sweetheart."

"You’d like her, Enjolras," Joly muttered under his breath.  "She reads Rousseau."  But Enjolras had already given Combeferre a helpless look and returned to his battle. 

Combeferre walked Joly over to the far end of his narrow room, where three hands were in varying stages of dissection and illustration.  “Listen, I’m sorry, Joly. I'm very sorry.  But where would I put it?  You see how it is here.  Enjolras doesn’t have any space, he’s got a stack of carbines under his couch and three Polish printers taking up his bed.  They lost their jobs.  Quite unfairly.  And the police want them.  So he’s come here…  Have you tried Prouvaire?  His rooms are enormous and they get very good light when he doesn’t block it out.”

"I am not trusting that sort of anatomy with Jehan."

"Well.  As I said, I can hold onto the foot for you, if that helps."

"It doesn’t."

-

After Joly had left, one hand dramatically and despairingly twined in his hair, Combeferre went back to work.  It was too bad, but—well, he _had_ offered to share his dissection last week.  And to take the foot.  Oh, bother.  Should he go after Joly?  He looked up and found Enjolras staring at him fixedly.  It was an expression Combeferre had learned to dread.

"Combeferre.  Was Joly…was Joly looking for _a little leg room_?”


	20. Dashing through the snow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> battle pillows again, yes

Enjolras had stomped most of the snow off his high boots outside the building, but enough had remained—on the boots, on his coat, on his hat, in his hair—that he steamed slightly, standing in front of Bahorel’s fire.  Bahorel had pushed him there as soon as he had stepped through the doorway, letting him talk while he was dusted and dried and plied with a hot cup of brandy with which he was unlikely to do more than to hold it between his pale hands. 

"…so in all, for us if for no one else in Paris, this unexpected storm is a blessing.  Lesgle cannot meet his Calais contact: well, but we know now the man is false, an agent.  We have time to consider.   Do we keep ourselves to ourselves, merely sending out warnings to anyone else who might deal with this agent?  Or does the meeting go on, put off to another day, and do we feed him misinformation, stuff him with inanity until he sees us as a set of amiable buffoons?  Misdirection being a specialty of yours,"—Enjolras bowed stiffly towards Bahorel, stiffly only because of a heavy coat and still-numb toes—"I thought I would consult with you."

"Yes, yes.  Drink that brandy, it’ll do you more good inside than out.  It’s medicinal."  Enjolras frowned and took a polite sip.  "I’m always up for sending the police after mare’s nests and hen’s teeth.  And Bossuet plays the buffoon _par excellence._   You stay there, let me put another log or two on the fire, and we’ll put our heads together when you’ve thawed.”

"I don’t feel the cold."

"What, you’re like that damned sailor Nelson?  Love of your country keeps you warm?"

"It was a brisk walk from my rooms.  —But, Bahorel…"

"Mm?"  Bahorel had nudged aside a large blue-ticked pillow with one foot, making room to work on the fire.

"Bahorel, why are all your pillows in this room?  On the floor?  Was it a…an…"  Enjolras’ imagination clearly failed him, and he simply waved one red-knuckled hand unsteadily.

"I took them out in the snow."

"Your pillows."

"They like it.  Wonderful exercise.  They’re warming up now.  You wouldn’t expect me to put them to bed cold and wet, would you?  Wouldn’t do it to a horse."

Enjolras fell silent, staring at a still-damp yellow-and-violet cushion.  After a long pause he ventured, “I have heard that there is a poet who took a lobster for a walk at the Palais Royale.  And some young men keep tortoises.  I suppose…”  His expression of polite, earnest confusion would have melted a tenderer heart than Bahorel’s; that atrocious creature simply grinned at him.  “…I suppose if you like to put your bedding out in the snow…”

Bahorel did, finally, take pity on him.  He patted Enjolras’ arm and took the brandy-glass away.  “I am a master of misdirection, you said it yourself.  Here, I’ll make coffee and we’ll get to work.”


	21. The Wrath of Joly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clue prompt: Joly, in a sick friend's bedroom, with a leech.

Joly’s eyes, already barely visible behind the fogged spectacles and between the wrapping of his scarf and the brim of his best hat, narrowed into obsidian slivers.  Bossuet tugged uneasily on his ear.  Grantaire, on the bed, groaned more loudly.

"I’m glad you could come so fast," ventured Bossuet.  Joly began to work his hands free from white gloves.  "The urchin I sent to fetch you must have been uncommonly quick.  A very Hermes.  On winged…sandals…"  He trailed into silence as Joly, thin-lipped, unwound from his scarf.  The hat was the last thing to go.  Bossuet took it in silence.

Grantaire groaned again.

"What I don’t understand," said Joly, "what I really _don’t understand_ , is how they came to be in Grantaire’s room in the first place.”

"It was a terrible mix-up.  You recall that decanter that your sister sent, the cut-glass one with the sweet sherry…um.  The one that looks so very much like your…leech-jar…"  Joly was rummaging in his black bag.  "…Well, when I told Grantaire I would bring him a little supper to make up for his hosting me this evening, which was very decent of him, naturally I thought I’d bring a little of that sherry, and it being dark in the room and we being in a hurry…"

"And Grantaire _drank the contents without looking, straight from the bottle?_ "  Joly’s curls trembled.  Grantaire tried another groan but apparently thought better of it.  His eyes were dark and sunken behind his own considerably less well-formed curls.

"It was a dare.  We were blindfold.  You know, like the time we were playing that game with—well, anyway."

“‘Well, anyway,’ he says. ‘Well, anyway.’  _Well, anyway,_ Grantaire has _swallowed all my leeches.”_

"…yes."  Bossuet had nothing to say in the face of wrathful sarcasm from Joly.  It was an unknown force.  He had lost all countenance, and actually wrung his hands.  Grantaire began to look truly unwell.

Joly drew himself up.  “I have brought rhubarb and castor oil.  I have brought ipecacuanha.  And if necessary I shall prepare a black draught and send for Combeferre with his antimonial wine.”

No one moved.

"Joly—" croaked Grantaire, and "What if—" faltered Bossuet.

Ten seconds’ silence, and then Joly’s mouth began to curl into a wry smile.  “Oh—I suppose they can’t do any harm.  It’s unlikely they’d latch onto the esophagus, and the digestive secretions of the stomach ought to—open your mouth, Grantaire, and say _Aaahh?_   Bring the candle over, Lesgle—I don’t see any sign of my poor pets.  They were the best leeches, you know.  Well-behaved, good eaters, not in the least finicky.  You’ll have to buy me a new set, Grantaire.”

As Bossuet helped wind him back up into his scarf, Joly fixed his gaze upon him, all fierceness gone.  “Have I told you about the time we convinced Bouchard that his brandy had been switched for a tincture of hellebore?  Well—it was quite the drollest thing, but it’s a bit of a story, perhaps not right now.  Where’s my hat?  Thanks.  My cane?  —Good night, gentlemen.  Musichetta sends her regards, and if you have any further trouble, you know where Combeferre lives.”

-

When he was gone, Bossuet flopped down onto the bed beside Grantaire, who was still sweating.  “Now that I think of it, he was supposed to be taking her to the theater tonight.  The gamin must have caught them going out the door.”

"That explains the appearance of Joly’s Best Hat in my rooms."  Grantaire rubbed his throat.  If one had a leech in one’s esophagus…

"They’ll have missed the first act by now."

"Oh, stop trying to make me feel guilty, Lesgle."  Grantaire coughed experimentally.  "I’m already sick to my stomach from leech-water.  —I’ll buy new opera tickets for your love-birds.  To deliver with the leeches.  His _poor pets_.”

Bossuet reached for a wine-bottle and scrutinized it very thoroughly before and after opening it.  “They were the very best leeches.  He’s often talked to me about them, very—very fondly, you could say.  They had quite a lot of individuality.  Did you know leeches could have personalities?  I could see signs of it myself when he bled me last month.”

"Please stop talking."

Grantaire stared at his door.  Perhaps it was not too late to call Joly back, with his black draught and his rhubarb and his ipecacuanha.


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clue prompt: Feuilly, someone else's house, an old toy

Every house he’s lived in has been someone else’s house.  Now and then one of his friends will speak of a home elsewhere and it will strike Feuilly that they have experienced something he never will.  The ownership of land, a house that had seen their family’s rising and falling.  Lesgle’s vanished patrimony, the Bahorel farmhouse, the Haute-Loire estate that Enjolras never spoke of but Combeferre and Courfeyrac sometimes did—well.  It was a reminder that one found foreign lands within one’s own country, even within the minds of one’s closest neighbor.

Still, his current lodgings were a home.

Feuilly’s relationship with Mme. Olivier was discreet.  Neither of them wished to burden the other: at least, Feuilly knew that he had no desire to make life more difficult for a young widow with two children and the eyes of every tenant on her.  She was the concierge, and the landlady’s niece, and her life was coming back together after the unexpected blessing of her husband’s death in an alley fight.  And for his part, Feuilly didn’t choose to tell his friends about her.  He didn’t want her name batted around in the café conversations; he didn’t want to be good-natured about the students’ easy teasing.  (And, though he rarely said this to himself, he didn’t want to be treated as a half-married man.  The cause needed unencumbered men, men without wives and children to fear for.   Feuilly could not bear the thought that Enjolras might call for someone to risk his life and might then turn Feuilly gently aside as nearly-a-family-man.)

So it was discreet.  It had begun in the late evenings, as she kept an eye on the door and he tried to stay awake long enough to finish an entire newspaper.  _Why don’t you read it out loud to me_ , she had said.  Some months after that, some months of drowsily picking over the day’s reports, she had said, _Why don’t you come in to supper tomorrow.  My children are staying with my sister and my room is too quiet._

But usually the children were not away, and Feuilly found that they were quick to attach to someone a bit like a father.  Once Émilie had come to him with a damaged toy.  It was her brother’s, his little wheeled horse that rolled along when you pulled it.  The string had frayed through.  No great task to replace it.  After that she turned to him for a dozen other small woes: eyes to be painted back onto a wooden doll, a broken bowl to glue together before Maman found out.  (That, he couldn’t manage, but the story had made Mme. Olivier laugh and kiss the little girl’s head.) 

Émilie went to a little neighborhood school and had mastered A-B-C and 1-2-3.  Gradually, before anyone quite noticed that he was coming to supper more often than not, they fell into a routine.  Feuilly listened to her repeat her lessons while her mother cooked.  The little brother, still in a baby’s dress, trotting about on sturdy fat legs, watched Feuilly trace letters on the kitchen table in water, and then patted them into oblivion with busy fat hands.

—-

Early that spring, Mme. Olivier took him aside.  The children were with her sister again: the countryside was safer for them.  Away from the cholera.  “Fernand,” she said, “I’m not ready to marry again.”  He blinked at her.  How did you answer that?  “I’m not ready to marry again,” she said, “and I don’t know if I’ll ever want to.  Marriage wasn’t good to me.  But you…”  She wrapped her shawl more firmly around her shoulders.  Her elbows stuck out.  “I thought I should make that clear, before you…before anyone grew too close to anyone else.  Does that make sense?”

It did. 

Her lip was trembling, so Feuilly put an arm around her shoulders.  They stood together until one of the other tenants opened a door upstairs and clumped out into the hall: and then they became discrete.


	23. Chapter 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clue prompt: Marat, in the Cordeliers, with a baguette

Aware that he had an audience, Marat selected the sharpest knife in the kitchen and gave it a few extra passes with a whetstone for good measure before applying it.  A single smooth cut down the middle, then carefully pulling on the sides—

 

"Why a baguette, though?"  Simonne seemed under-impressed with his performance.  "This is ludicrous.  You’ll have to have a talk with the man."

 

Marat looked over his shoulder.  “And say what?  He’s one of my most trustworthy informants.”

 

"Yes, but he could simply _give_ me a note.”

 

Marat grunted as he probed with the knife-tip.  “—There, I’ve got it.”  He removed the small clay capsule from the center of the bread-loaf, smashed it under the handle of the knife, and drew out a scrap of paper.  “Anyway, if he gave you a note and you were accosted, searched—”

 

"—In the heart of the Cordeliers district?"

 

"Well, _if_ you were—”

 

"Jean-Paul Marat, I think you enjoy the theatrics.  The drama.  The elaborate adventures."

 

He looked at her solemnly.  “If I enjoyed the drama, I would insist on something like swallowing this note, now that I have committed its contents to memory, so that no police spy could ever find it.  And I would tell my Cordeliers baker friend to deliver the next message in some yet-more-secure fashion.  Perhaps in a fish or amongst a bundle of garlic.”

 

Simonne threw up her hands and walked out of the room, laughing.

 

When she was gone, Marat rubbed his chin thoughtfully.  With an experimental air, he popped the scrap of paper into his mouth and chewed.  Then he marked down _garlic_ on the slate where Simonne kept her grocery list.


	24. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clue prompt: Musichetta, in a covered gallery, with something tricolor

"Hush, your dress is perfect.  If you fuss about it any more you’ll hurt my feelings.  _Yes_ , trust me, the sash should fall that way, it looks just right.”  Musichetta shook her head impatiently.  For a young woman whose knowledge of needlework ended at fixing lost buttons, and whose interest in fashion-plates was purely professional, Sophie was awfully reluctant to trust a friend who she _knew_ understood much better about dresses.  Left to her own devices she wore the most impossible colors.  “And don’t even think about touching your hat.  If you touch that hat, Sophie, if you shift that feather so much as _one inch_ , so help me God I will—”

"What about flowers?" 

Musichetta took a deep breath and let it out.  “Yes.  Yes, all right, you may have some flowers.  Here, we’ll just step into here—”  The gallery was a regular spot for sellers of all the little trinkets and pretty things that men and women might pick up before meeting dear friends.

Musichetta and Sophie wove through the crowd, stepping around young men picking out the perfect nosegay and young women choosing among the cheaper painted fans.  Sophie couldn’t do anything too scandalous with flowers, could she?  Musichetta let her attention wander: they were to meet their law-school friends today, to celebrate the failure of another  term.  _Never a lawyer!_ read Sophie’s sash.  She had insisted, and Musichetta had sat up all night at the embroidery-work.  Her only demand in exchange was that Sophie let the end of her shawl fall over the words so that they were not immediately, confusingly obvious.  What sort of a motto was _that?_

Musichetta nodded absently while Sophie collected poppies, cornflowers, a single lily, and had them tied up in ribbons.  If only she were taller— Of course it was silly to be standing on her toes and craning her neck.  Bossuet and Bahorel would find them, or they would find Bossuet and Bahorel—

Next to her, Sophie squeaked as someone spun her around and scooped her into an embrace.  When Bahorel set her on her feet, he stared frankly and admiringly at her bosom.  He bent down and kissed the petals of the flowers pinned just at the front of her dress.  “My dear, that is a truly brilliant and most Republican bouquet.  Someone will surely arrest you for that.”


	25. Chapter 25

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clue prompt: Enjolras with a problem that only Musichetta would know how to deal with

"You know some printers, don’t you, Bahorel?  Sympathetic to our principles?  Would any be willing to take a job publishing against Martignac, do you think?"  It was a perfectly reasonable start to a conversation.  It was a perfectly reasonable start to a _complicated and uncomfortable_ conversation.  Bahorel was forced to admit that yes, he knew an immensely sympathetic printer, an ardent republican printer who would never be satisfied with Martignac’s sops and moderate gestures, but that this revolutionary fire-eater was not inclined to do business with the _Amis de l’ABC._ And why not?

"Well—do you remember the disagreement with that women’s club this autumn?"

"No."

"They approached us about collaborating on a series of pamphlets—"

"Oh—yes, that I remember."  Enjolras made an unhappy gesture.  "Suffrage for women. I had to decline.  I admire their dedication, but until we can achieve meaningful suffrage for all men I do not—" 

Bahorel held up his hands.  “I know, I know.  I agreed with you at the time.  But the printer is closely involved with that group.”

"And…what, he has held a grudge against us?"

"No, it’s just…did I mention that the printer is my mistress?  Well, technically the mother owns the business, but Sophie—the daughter, my mistress—manages most of the printing…"  Enjolras seemed not to know whether to smile or frown; the furrow in his brow would have amused Bahorel if he weren’t in the middle of making awkward explanations.  "So, as part of our little understanding, a clause in our social contract—"

"You and…Sophie?"

"Yes."

"The printer’s daughter."

"Yes."  Eventually the situation was made plain: the relationship of Sophie and Bahorel required a complete separation of his political work and hers.   Enjolras protested in the name of the Republic; Bahorel shook his head.  Sophie had had some truly blistering words for the position of the Amis de l’ABC—for the position of _Bahorel_ —on the topic of suffrage for women.  He couldn’t in decency convey them to Enjolras, but suffice it to say that they had very nearly quarreled, when it was an understood thing that they _never_ quarreled…

Suddenly he slapped his knee.  “Hang on, I know a way around this. Maybe.  We’ll need Joly.”

—

Sophie laughed.  “Really?  Bahorel thought they could ask you to—what, sneak a print job through here without my knowledge?  Or was the theory that if Joly asks you to do it it’s not the same as Bahorel asking me?”

"Something like that."  Musichetta swirled her chocolate and blew on it before taking a long sip.  "He would make either a brilliant lawyer or a terrible one.  It’s a pity he doesn’t bother with studying."

"You know all about that.  There’s no way to work decently within the current legal structure, no matter how many widows and orphans he defended he would only be supporting a corrupt—"

"Yes, I know."

"…I see what you just did, Musichetta.  Appealing to my essential solidarity with his political views."

"I promise you I wasn’t.  I wasn’t doing anything. _I_ just think Bahorel is funny and like to tell you so.  —I said they would have to wait till tomorrow, I didn’t tell them yes or no.”

"Them?"

"Enjolras came as well."

"Good heavens.  In the middle of all our fashion plates?"

"Mmhmmm."  They contemplated the problem.

"They probably think I’m holding a grudge over hurt feelings.  Surely a woman couldn’t choose to separate her professional and political sphere from her romances."  Musichetta had little to say to this: this was Sophie’s realm, busily teasing out problems, talking about professional and political spheres, putting names to them.

"What do _you_ think?”

"Um?"  The question startled her out of her contemplation of hot chocolate and personalities.  "Oh.  Well—I think it’s a paying job, and we can trust their discretion.  And at the moment there aren’t so many printers ready to put out anything contrary to this Martignac.  I suppose he’s bought back some goodwill freeing up the press, but…" 

"But it’s just a sop.  Oh, I do hate a moderate!"  Musichetta smiled into her chocolate.  "Well.  We’ll do it, then.  If _you_ are asking me.  Because, you know, we don’t have any agreement against mingling _our_ political spheres, you and I.”

"You make it sound like something shocking."  Musichetta was not sure that she herself had spheres.  What would you even call her political sphere?  Her professional sphere?  The word began to sound foolish when you said it too many times.  Still, the two of them ended up in agreement often enough, she and Sophie—

“ _Shocking_ will be Bahorel’s swagger when he decides his clever scheme has paid off.”

—

He did swagger.  Bahorel did swagger, a very little bit and only briefly; as soon as the work began Sophie turned him out into the street to take a long walk with Enjolras, who had also come to make the printing arrangements.  Joly took Sophie’s mother out to a long and elegant lunch so that she wouldn’t have to worry about fiery political texts coming from the business that was increasingly in the hands of her daughter.

And Musichetta kept the front desk, thinking cozily and quietly over a pot of tea.


	26. Chapter 26

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clue prompt: Marat, somewhere too nice for him, with his pistols.

Wisps of some ethereal matter floated through the air. It was perhaps like the cottony seeds of poplar trees, but golden rather than white; and from the substance came a faint chiming music. 

The floor was soft but springy underfoot, the texture of imagined clouds and the color of pearls.

A white-winged being approached Marat and embraced him; it smelled of incense and meadow flowers. “You are very welcome, Jean-Paul Marat,” it said, and its voice was a shepherd’s pipe. “Lay down your burdens. Set aside those pistols. This is a place of plowshares, not of swords.” 

"Is this…Heaven?"

"Yes!" The being laughed, a harp-sound, and kissed Marat’s forehead. Its lips were the morning dew. A dove flew overhead and sang a symphony.

Marat jammed his pistols firmly back into his sash. “Yeah, right, so, I think I was looking for something a little different, thanks.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tumblr user septembriseur suggests the following: "Marat-heaven comes equipped with Hydra!Brissot: Marat cuts off his head, and he grows two more, and then Marat gets to cut those off— a never-ending infinity of severable Jacques Brissot heads."


	27. Detective Feuilly is on the Pillow Case

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clue prompt: Bahorel, at a coach-station, with a notebook.

[Feuilly’s investigation of the pillows](http://needsmoreresearch.tumblr.com/post/76421794671/pilferingapples) began due to Circumstances.  Circumstances involving a windy day, Jean Prouvaire, Jean Prouvaire’s notebook, and Jean Prouvaire’s eagerness to share his more astonishing discoveries.  Of course Feuilly didn’t believe a word of it, but it was a charming fantasy—Bahorel surrounded with the brash improbability of vicious deadly _pillows_ , leading them like some English master of hounds.  He let Prouvaire elaborate, since it was not only a charming fantasy but a healthier one than his usual collection of ghosts and skeletons.  He even let Prouvaire give him the notebook to look through, and insist that he question Bahorel closely on the subject next time they saw one another.

A week later, when he and Bahorel were waiting at a coach station to meet a republican from the Lyon silk trade, Feuilly remembered the conversation and chuckled to himself.  “Bahorel—”

"Hey?"

He fished the notebook out of his coat pocket, where it had been sitting all this time, and tapped it lightly on Bahorel’s chest.  “Bahorel, our friend Jehan has given me a grave charge; I am to ask you about your pillows.”

He was prepared for Bahorel’s laughter, and half prepared for the hearty punch on his shoulder.  He was not prepared for the invitation to attend Bahorel’s room that very night for a little pillow talk.


	28. Chapter 28

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fic prompt stew: Pere Lachaise cemetery; Courfeyrac and Feully; soggy, zany, crooked.

"Wouldn’t Prouvaire be more of a…" Feuilly couldn’t really think of the word for what Prouvaire would be more of, but it encompassed all the qualities necessary for haunting the Père Lachaise in the winter. 

Courfeyrac shook his head. “Prouvaire says it is predictable.”

"I thought he would like all these things. Haunting. Graveyards. Appearing in mirrors and saying boo. Whimsical schemes.”

"Now he says it would be too obvious."

Feuilly sighed. Someone else should have gone with Courfeyrac. Joly and Bossuet—they always claimed they enjoyed haunting. Or Bahorel—he was a fine poltergeist when he felt like it. But no. Here he was, the ghost of Feuilly, dutifully slogging a crooked and noncorporeal path among the tombstones, feeling the sleety rain soak into his ectoplasm, just to keep Courfeyrac company. (Enjolras and Combeferre were above such things, and Grantaire disinclined to take the effort.)

No one was around to be haunted, of course. Not in this weather. They reached the crypt of Abélard and Héloïse and stared at the love-letters with their smudged ink. Courfeyrac rearranged them in a vaguely spooky manner, then settled down to make mysterious creaking noises for a minute or two. There was still no one around. Feuilly thought of the newspapers he had left unread on the Musain table.

"Well," said Feuilly.

"Well, said Courfeyrac.

Feuilly patted him on his ghostly shoulder. “There’s always next Valentine’s Day.”

"I suppose."

"Come on. We’ll go back to the Musain and warm up."

They drifted out of the cemetery again, nodding politely to the handful of shades that were braving the weather as well. Not very many. 

"It’s only," said Courfeyrac. "It’s only that I feel it’s proper."

"Mmhm."

"I like to get into the—"

"Don’t say it."

"Into the—"

"Don’t."

"—spirit—"

"No."

"—spiritofthings."

"Next year you’re bringing someone else."


	29. Chapter 29

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fic prompt stew: A laboratory; Enjolras and Combeferre; magnificent, nosy, fierce.
> 
> (Prompt from oilan on tumblr, inspired by her fabulous Science Heroes drawing.)

"Are you genuinely concerned that their activities will compromise the Amis? Or are you…"

"Prying? Intruding? Putting my nose where it doesn’t belong?"

Enjolras looked at his friend with concern. Combeferre had not been himself since the formation of the [Science Heroes](http://oilan.tumblr.com/post/80936653114). He had been testy. Irritable. Peevish, even.

The Science Heroes business was something Enjolras did not fully comprehend but had so far tolerated. Joly assured him that it was entirely scientific; Bossuet assured him that it was all in good fun and doing no harm. (“Oh, you know, we stop a few crimes, save a few widows and orphans, have a few drinks after in a café.” “But Bossuet, aren’t your efforts simply upholding the existing corrupt power structure?” “No, no. We’re _citizen_ super heroes, it’s subversive.” “Please explain.” “Well, you see—” And then a cackling madman in a white cloak had sprung into the room from nowhere, announcing himself Mephisto the Magnificent, and Bossuet and Joly had opened a set of metal canisters and Enjolras couldn’t really remember much more after that except that everything had seemed _just delightful_.)

But. An obscurely disgruntled Combeferre was most certainly detrimental to the cause, whether the Science Heroes’ activities were or not, and detrimental to Enjolras’ personal comfort as well (although he was severe with himself when it came to personal comforts), so he had agreed to this investigation. They were now in Joly’s rooms, Joly and Bossuet both being occupied elsewhere. (Enjolras had a vague idea that Joly knew a young woman somehow. Presumably Bossuet did as well. So many people did. How?)

Joly’s rooms seemed larger than he remembered. Had he taken an additional set? Enjolras did not remember this long bench, covered with bottles and tubes of colored liquids. He did not remember a map of Paris that took up an entire wall, marked with colored pins. He definitely did not remember a man-sized wire structure that gave off blue sparks. He was just about to ask Combeferre about that last thing, when he heard a savage growl from his friend.

"I knew it. I knew it. That fiend! He has taken all my volumetric flasks and filled them with God-knows-what, and I shall never get them back!”


	30. Chapter 30

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fic prompt stew: a rowboat; joly & bossuet; fishy, swampy, magnificent.

"Is it not—"

"If you say magnificent, I will strangle you with your own cravat. Which, incidentally, is my cravat; I know perfectly well that you borrowed it last year and have been pretending it was yours all along.”

"I don’t know why you have to be so sullen. This is our future."

"I had a future. It was medicine. Medicine was my future, it was a nice future, and I liked it very much.”

"This is not un-medical."

“It is a leech-farm.”

"We’ll get a little boat and you can take up angling. There are bound to be—oh, carp. Carp like this sort of thing, don’t they?"

"The water is not deep enough for a boat."

"We will get you some very high boots, then. But just look at it, Joly. Look about you with an open eye, an open mind, an open heart. It is magnificent.”

It was a lucky thing, really, that Joly was too short to get very far strangling him.


	31. Chapter 31

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> have we investigated the idea that the succulents have their own artistic purposes.

It was apparent that Jean Prouvaire was growing new leaves.  Well—what of it?  It was healthy and natural in this season.  And yet.  And yet.  As the weeks passed, as Prouvaire sprawled ever lankier and ganglier, concern moved through the eclectic group of succulents.  _Let him make his own choices_ , said the  _Agave manfreda x bloodspot_ growing beside the ornamental bench.  (He had been transplanted from his pot to the soil eleven years ago, and communed with the other plants in the garden: he had pricked many fingers in his lifetime and was something of an expert in the ways of vegetative resistance, though an inattentive observer might mistake him for nothing more than a chatterbox and a trifler.)  
It was Combeferre, finally, who said something.  The aloe pressed a leaf gently against Prouvaire’s stem.  _Jehan_ , he said.  _Jehan, don’t you get enough light?  Your internodes are so long; you are bolting; you will exhaust yourself.  Should you be moved to a sunnier location?_

The soft-leaved sedum shrugged away from him.  _No, Combeferre.  No.  It is an expression of my internal darkness.  No light but liberty—the perfect liberty of the future, the perfect liberty of universal goodness—no light but that will make me grow in my natural form._

#AU where the Amis are all succulents#Feuilly was picked up as an unlabeled cutting at a plant show and turned out to be a Kalanchoe Mother-of-Thousands


	32. Chapter 32

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No one sent a "shag me" prompt because I beat them to it.

"In England, they say _shag_.”

"Really."  Enjolras tried the word in his mouth, tasting sounds foreign to his tongue.  "Chaille…ché…chègue."

"Something like that."  Combeferre was plainly hiding a laugh.  Enjolras struck him lightly on the shoulder. 

They were lying in the grass on the riverbank: Enjolras felt exposed enough already like this, without Combeferre’s amusement at his expense.  He felt his undress keenly.  He had set aside his hat, for one thing.  It was new and he was being careful with it; he had weighted it with a stone and left it on a dry spot.  A hat seemed incorrect for watching birds.

Indeed, Enjolras felt that he himself was fundamentally incorrect for watching birds.  He stared harder at the pair of slender black forms that had attracted Combeferre’s interest. 

"But—they are still just cormorants?  It is a common bird, is it not?"

"Not _Phalacrocorax aristotelis_ , not inland.  It is a common bird of the coast, my friend, not a common bird of the Seine.  What can they be doing on this river?  They are out of place.”

Briefly, but only briefly, Enjolras felt a moment’s communion with nature.


End file.
